The Broken Horn lay like a beaten beast, deathly still beneath the heavy blanket of night. The energy from the rooftop training still hung in the air like an electric charge, but physical exhaustion had settled into the building like a heavy weight. In the Nobody’s room, Silarias sat on the edge of his bed. His muscles shook uncontrollably, a reaction to the brutal forces he had just used through his small body. The purple mist of the Ward seeped through the cracks of the window frame, a poisonous and almost physical reminder of the suffocating world outside this fragile safe place.
Beside him, on a rough wooden crate serving as a nightstand, lay the gloves. In the low moonlight they looked different than before. They were no longer just objects of dead metal and rusted parts. They seemed to breathe with a soft movement, visible only if one stared long enough. They lay there like sleeping predators, dangerous and filled with a power that could tear reality itself apart.
Downstairs in the tavern, the soft sounds of Bones cleaning the bar with mechanical slowness could be heard. Somewhere in the shadows, the distant rhythmic clicking of Beat sharpening his blades echoed, a sound like the heartbeat of an approaching doom. The silence was heavy, filled by Juro’s reveal about the gloves. The words “Hope of the Nobodies” still echoed through Silarias’s head, a legacy of blood and ash he could not yet fully understand.
As soon as Silarias closed his exhausted eyes, he was welcomed not by the merciful darkness of sleep but by a blinding explosion of light. This was no ordinary dream. This was a violent entry into the very core of his weapons.
The environment was an endless plain of liquid white gold. The air vibrated with a constant low sound, an ancient hum that made his bones shake and seemed to wash his soul in pure energy. In the heart of this golden empty space stood the twins.
The man was a massive warrior. He wore heavy armor that reflected the raw, indestructible texture of the left glove. His hair was like melted bronze, glowing and wild, and his eyes held the chilly, timeless calm of a giant mountain. He gave off an energy of absolute defense, a power suggesting that even the collapse of the sky would not make him move.
The woman was his opposite: slender, fast, and terrifyingly deadly. Her gear was lighter and sharper, an exact reflection of the right glove. Her movements did not follow a line. They flowed like a flame in a storm, hard to catch and fierce. She was the picture of merciless attack, a cutting will that would leave no shield safe.
They were brother and sister, joined by a bloodline made in magical steel thousands of years ago by the corrupted god himself. They did not speak with words, as their throats had been filled with metal dust for centuries. But Silarias felt their emotions like a giant wave: a bitter mix of ancient loneliness and a sudden sharp hope that caused physical pain.
Silarias walked toward them. In this golden world, he was not a target, not a Nobody, and not a reincarnation of a forgotten legend. He was simply a twelve year old child seeking warmth in an icy world. Without hesitation, he threw his arms around them. His head rested against the cold but strangely moving chest of the man, while the woman placed her hand protectively and softly on his back. The energy flowing between them was overwhelming, a golden stream of pure power filling his entire being with a sense of coming home.
Then Silarias broke the holy silence of the dream. He looked up, his eyes large and disarmingly honest.
“I am so happy you are here,” he whispered. “But I just realized something at the table downstairs.” He looked at their faces, the faces of the knights who had protected him all day without him even fully knowing it. “I never got to ask… what my gloves are called. What are your names?”
The reaction was violent and immediate. The male warrior froze as if struck by lightning from the sky. The woman moved back a step, her hands flying to her mouth. In the world of these special weapons, a name is not just a label. It is the ultimate key, the thing that breaks the chain between user and weapon. By asking for their names, Silarias no longer saw them as tools, but as living, free souls. He had broken the barrier between object and master, which had held for thousands of years, with a single question.
The white world around them began to crack like breaking glass. The twins looked at each other with a look of pure, blinding disbelief. They realized this boy was the first wielder in centuries who did not want to own them, but to know them. The woman leaned toward him, her golden eyes glowing with tears of pure light. She opened her mouth to whisper the name that would split the foundations of the world, but at that exact moment, physical reality pulled Silarias back with the force of a strong hand.
Silarias shot upright in his bed with a scream that stayed stuck in his throat like a piece of glass. He gasped for the sour, icy air of the Ward. His forearms were on fire. It was not physical flame, but an energy filled white hot heat being pumped directly through his veins like liquid metal replacing his blood.
He looked at his hands. The gloves, which had been lying on the crate, were gone. Instead, they were now locked around his arms. But they had changed. The symbols on the metal now glowed with a constant, pulsing golden light that lit up the room in an unnatural brightness. They were no longer heavy or clumsy. They felt like a part of his own nervous system, weightless and natural.
Downstairs in the tavern, the impact of the event echoed through the entire building. Juro stood abruptly from his chair, his beer cup falling to the floor. The smoke from his pipe formed two gigantic crossing swords in the air before violently disappearing. “He woke them up,” Juro muttered, his voice shaking with a respect he rarely showed. “The baboon did it.”
Vespera stopped in the middle of a complex move in the training room. A silver thread snapped between her razor sharp fingers. She looked at the ceiling, her white eyes wide. “The contracts of the old world are burned. A new promise has been made in the blood of the Nobody.”
Beat stopped tapping on his drums. He took off his headphones and listened to the sudden heavy silence that had fallen over the Ward. “The rhythm… it has changed. The Nobody is not playing along anymore. He is leading the whole orchestra.”
In the next room, Nyx woke up. She felt the heat coming through the stone wall, a warmth that reminded her of the sun. She placed her hand against the wall and felt the deep vibration of a roaring lion. She smiled weakly, a mix of pride and mortal terror. “You really are an idiot, Sil. You always do the impossible.”
As the golden heat pulsed from Silarias’s room, an encounter took place outside in the icy mist that would change the history of the rebellion. A young enemy fighter, dressed in glowing white armor that stood out painfully against the rusted surroundings, moved with arrogant speed through the back alleys. He was a tracker sent to find the source of the energy spike.
“Got you,” he whispered, drawing a silver sword that gave off a blinding light. “The Nobody dies tonight.”
He took a step toward the back door of the Broken Horn, but the ground beneath his boots began to sing. Not as music, but as a sound of death.
Crack.
Kaelen’s black staff slammed onto the stones with massive force, exactly three centimeters in front of the fighter’s foot. Kaelen stood there as motionless as a dark statue. He saw nothing with his eyes, but his special hearing mapped every part of the fighter: the fast heartbeat, the flow of light in his blades, and the weak spot in his left knee.
“You are out of your territory, boy,” Kaelen growled. His voice sounded like sandpaper being dragged over frozen metal.
“A blind old man?” the fighter laughed arrogantly. He moved forward with a speed invisible to a normal human. His sword cut open the air in a streak of white light. But Kaelen was no longer there. He moved on the vibrations of the attack itself as if he were the wind. With a smooth move, he drove his staff beneath the sword and rammed the tip of the stick into the fighter’s stomach. The blow sent a vibration through the fighter’s nervous system, instantly turning off his light and making him sick.
The fighter gasped for air, his lungs completely empty. Before he could hit the ground, a thick suffocating blanket of black smoke came out from the wall behind him. Juro stepped from the shadows, his burning pipe lighting up his scars like an approaching storm. Juro’s smoke wrapped around the fighter’s neck and limbs like living, suffocating wire.
“Do not kill him, Kaelen,” Juro said calmly. He took a deep breath and blew the bitter smoke straight into the prisoner’s struggling face. “This one has information. He knows what the leaders think of the Nobody.”
Five minutes later, the air in the cellar was thick and suffocating. The fighter was chained to a heavy metal chair. Around him stood the mentors like gods of the underworld. Yorick leaned on his shining black shovel, his green lantern flickering restlessly. The souls within the lantern wanted the fighter’s light. Vespera let her six mechanical arms scrape loudly against each other as the blue cooling liquid in her pipes began to boil.
“Fire is nothing new to us, angel,” Juro whispered, his face only millimeters from the prisoner’s. The black smoke from his skin filled the fighter’s lungs, making every breath feel like hot liquid. “Tell me about the black wings. Or I will let Yorick feed your soul to his lantern.”
Above their heads, the floor vibrated. The golden energy of Silarias’s bond vibrated through the entire tavern. The fighter froze. His eyes went wide in pure, new fear. “He… he completed the bond? That is impossible! No child can handle the twins!”
“That child is no ordinary child,” Kaelen said, tapping his staff on the floor once more. “That is the Nobody. And you are going to tell us exactly why you are so afraid of him.”
